(not necessarily) Raconteur, (not necessarily) Southbound: The shipping adventure, Part One

Boat on Boat

We got back to St. Thomas on Monday the 16th, perhaps a bit earlier than we might have, as our load date and time, when it finally came through, was set for Saturday the 21st at 1500. I easily found a room for that night at The Green Iguana, in the Mafolie area above old town Charlotte Amalie, and less easily got us onto a Sunday flight back to Miami. We had picked up a mooring at Frenchtown Bay Marina (which is mostly the base for a charter operation called Waypoints); we considered going around and anchoring near the airport but the mooring was quite comfortable and convenient, so we stayed the whole week.

We (mostly JP and Susan) then did semi-leisurely preparations for the load; we topped up the provisions and did our best to eat most of them, although we did treat ourselves to a great meal at Taco Chelle in Frenchtown on the first night. We had already done most of the interior prep, making sure that things were not likely to fly during loading or on the journey. It's 1,430nm from the Gregerie Channel to the Narragansett Bay, give or take.

On Friday we did some cleaning, and Susan and JP took down the dodger and the bimini, battened down the mainsail (they had already done a wrap and tie on the jib), shut down the wind gen, covered and tied the winches, and got the fenders ready. We visited the Marsgracht (the transport ship) in the afternoon to witness the proceedings; the ladders on the side of the ship looked pretty scary, and we decided that Leigh would get off with the luggage at Frenchtown Bay, drop it at the guest house, and then hang around at Crown Bay while JP and Susan took Raconteur around for her load appointment. As it happens, Leigh got there (at the far end of the cruise center) at 1441, just in time to see Raconteur pulling around. They got the call to come alongside, at around 1510, and I just hung around waiting for...something. Well, the "something" was, in the end, a text from Susan at 1534: "Want a gelato?" No ladder; they were ferried back to Crown Bay Marina (home of a delightful gelato and coffee spot) by fast dinghy. It's not clear that the procedure by which boat owners climb rope ladders is any longer in place - I suspect the lawyers have put the kibosh on that risky sport.

I managed to capture the photo above as we were getting ready to leave Crown Bay gelato and head to the guest house, Raconteur about to be lowered onto her cradle for the trip.

We had a nice dinner at Mafolie (hotel and restaurant overlooking the city), and a quiet night, and we flew back to Miami and arrived home in Lauderdale around 1645 on Sunday - an altogether anti-climactic end to this part of the adventure.

The Marsgracht is due at Newport in the early morning of Friday the 27th; our bet is that it will be Saturday before we will be summoned for the unload. We will take some time to put everything (or most things) back together, and then plan (WOG and WP, as the shipping line says) to make the 15 hour trip to Guilford as a passage.

Meanwhile, here is one of the last shots of Raconteur in the beautiful turquoise waters of the Caribbean.